Health Tips & Information

Main menu

Which Diets Are Best for Losing Weight?

At the beginning of every year, millions of men and women make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. Are you one of those people? I can’t say that I am because I’ve always been fairly fit and I exercise regularly. In addition, I pay attention to what I eat.

No, I’m not a health nut and I love the occasional slice of pizza or hamburger. But I’m conscious not to make such foods part of my regular diet. And I gave up drinking soda on a regular basis many year’s ago.

One of the big reasons I gave up soda and coffee is because I discovered that my body was sensitive to caffeine. If I were to have glass of soda with dinner today, I would have a very tough time falling asleep. But I haven’t tested that theory again in many years.

Anyway, I could have switched to de-caff versions of those drinks, and on occasion I will have a de-caff cup of tea or soda. But I don’t miss drinking down all the sugary sweetness. And there’s no desire to run to the store and get a 32 oz Big Gulp.

But I digress. Let’s get back to the question of diets.

You know their names — Atkins, South Beach, Low Carb, Low Fat, Mediterranean, etc. The list seems endless when it comes to the ways you can lose weight.

Some people swear by one or more of these diets, but I was curious as to whether there was such a thing as a “best” diet. So I did a little research and came across a couple of articles in the Annals of Internet Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

What I found was pretty interesting. From and article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a low-carb versus low-fat diet study found that the low carb diet was the winner. Test subjects in the low-carb diet study lost about 12 pounds after one year, and the low-far diets could only shed 4 pounds on average.

But don’t get too happy just yet. The diet study presented in JAMA disclosed that regardless of the diet, whether low-fat, low-carb, Atkins, or South Beach, all test subjects lost about 16 pounds after a year.

Want to know what the common thread was for all of the weight loss plans?

Drum roll, please…..

It was exercise!

Ultimately what this seems to mean is that one diet plan may work for you but not someone else. And that’s okay. Our bodies and metabolisms respond differently.

So if you find that a diet program isn’t cutting it for you, then find another one.

But when it’s all said and done, how you combine the diet with exercise could determine whether you lose one pound or ten. Just make sure that the exercise is fairly intense, preferably with weight training and cardio routines included. Casual walks around the block won’t get the job done.